Over the past twenty years, urban experts who assessed the development of major cities in Russia have sounded the alarm regarding social infrastructure. The rate of housing construction in almost all cities with a population of one million people dramatically outstripped the growth of social and engineering infrastructure.
That is why elementary classes with 40 or more students and daily traffic jams. In these, hundreds of thousands of people are forced to burn their time in the morning and evening, something that has unfortunately become an ordinary phenomenon in new neighborhoods of dozens of cities in the country.
However, the situation did not develop into a full-fledged communal disaster. Somewhere along the line, the local authorities found internal resources to smooth over the emerging infrastructure deficits, in which they managed to extract necessary resources from developers in the form of new roads, schools, and utility lines. Nevertheless, the acuteness of the problem did not lose and regularly appeared in the media and on the authorities’ agenda.
Furthermore, there are signs that the state and businesses have been able to work out a mutually acceptable practice of participating developers in developing the residential environment in emerging neighborhoods. So far, it concerns only one point in St. Petersburg and the neighboring towns and villages of the Leningrad region, but there is no doubt that in the case of strategic success, this practice will quickly spread to other areas. This is because they are also waiting for examples that can be reproduced in their country.
The conference Development of Building Complex of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, of which took place on the 19th of October in the historical park Russia, becoming the brightest display of such practice formation.
Without a doubt, the main event of the conference was the signing of an agreement between several key developers working in the Leningrad region: Setl Group, GC Samolet, and CDS Group. All of these companies have had shared responsibilities for the planning and construction of the tramway, which would provide transport links between the Nevsky district of St. Petersburg and the Vsevolozhsky district of the region.
Experts are already saying that this interaction experience marks the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in urban infrastructure development. Everyone will benefit from the changed conditions: the authorities, residents, and developers.
The authorities’ motivation is clear, with the availability of roads, kindergartens, and schools largely determining the residents’ behavior in the elections. It is no coincidence that quite recently, at the platform of the All-Russian Forum Strategic Planning in Regions and Cities of Russia in early November, the Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, acknowledged the problems that have been seen in this area. As it was noted back in 2014-2015, the total shortage of schools in the northern capital was about 100 institutions, and kindergartens more than 200.
Since then, enormous efforts have been made to achieve profound results. There have been 44 more schools, and the number of kindergartens has also seen a significant increasing, going up by 127. However, as we can see, this has only slowed the problem, not solved it.
Moreover, at the same venue, Beglov himself warned that after 2024, according to the available funding plans, the pace of construction of children’s and educational institutions will slow down. This means that the gap between needs and possibilities may again begin to grow. Despite this, the active involvement of developers in solving the problem can provide a strategic turning point for the better.